This pilot hit the nail on the head in his open letter. He needs to be awarded a Medal for having the TESTICULAR FORTITUDE to say all this in a very profound way!
The newspaper stated today that some Muslim doctor is saying we are profiling him because he has been checked three times while getting on an airplane. The following is a letter from a pilot. This well spoken man, who is a pilot with American Airlines, says what is in his heart, beautifully.... Read and absorb.
"YOU WORRY ME!"
By American Airlines Pilot - Captain John Maniscalco
I've been trying to say this since 9-11, but you worry me. I wish you didn't. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country.
But you don't blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me. I notice you because I can't help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don't fully understand their grievances and hate, but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.
On September 11, nineteen ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children's mothers.
The Palestinians Celebrated, the Iraqis were overjoyed as was most of the Arab world. So, I notice you now. I don't want to be worried. I don't want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that have destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help. As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you, and the Arab/Muslim terrorist.
How do I differentiate between the true Arab / Muslim-Americans and the Arab Muslim terrorists in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter these same good neighbors and children?
The events of September 11th changed the answer. I t is not my responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of its religions, with ALL of its different citizens, with all of its faults. It is time for every Arab/Muslim in this country to determine it for me.
I want to know, I demand to know, and I have a right to know, whether or not you love America ? Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you proudly display it in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation, that He will protect and prosper it? Or do you pray that Allah will destroy it in one of your Jihads? Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords? A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by also paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America ?
If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it. Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America
Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent because I worry about who you regard as innocent. No more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks because I worry about what is unprovoked to you. I am not interested in any more sympathy. I am only interested in action.
What will you do for America - our great country - at this time of crisis, at this time of war?
I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting "Allah Bless America " I want to see young Arab/Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time, and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole.
The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize right now in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are. Hand them over to us, now! But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action. Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals. The very few Arab/Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating.
They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States proves who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroa d than they did with supporting our country and denouncing "leaders" like Khadafi, Hussein , Farrakhan, and Arafat
If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people, then I want chapter and verse from the Koran (Quran) and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Koran are good, and pure, and true, when your "leaders" are teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance?
It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if huge numbers of the world's Muslims interpret th e teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion. A form that has been demonstrated to us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide.. A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members (some as young as five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after a year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America , the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted, that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.
We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us: Our rights under the greatest constitution in the world.
I want to know where every Arab Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family. I am pleading with you to let me know.
I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American.
But there can be no gray areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand. Until then. "YOU WORRY ME!"
What an excellent article!!! And that is the way I feel. Whenever I see anyone of Arab decent, I cring! I do not trust any of them! And I hate feeling that wey...but ya know what...that is the way I feel. They appear to be a time bomb ready to go off at any minute. And perhaps maybe someday they will.
They try to make us feel shameful of our life styles here. But this is what freedom is!!! CHOICE!!! We don't all agree with all of these so called freedoms, but we deal with it! So the Arabs that live in this country need to start dealing with it to.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
It is now six years since that horrible day which changed all our lives, and the wounds are still there — as is, we were reminded a few days ago, the attacks’ chief architect: Osama bin Laden. His continued existence may or may not matter strategically at this point (simply because his network has become so decentralized), but it is at least symbolic of the Bush administration’s failure to do the right things, at the right time and place. The ceremonies being held around the country today, including one in Schenectady to unveil a tastefully done private memorial using twisted steel beams from the World Trade Center, honor the victims and rescue workers of 9/11 — who surely deserve to be honored. But while it’s OK to be be sad and even sentimental on an occasion like this, it’s also important to be clear-eyed about the threat facing us and how we respond to it. The threat cannot be dismissed — it is very real and dangerous, and more attacks, perhaps even worse than the ones on 9/11, are likely — but a growing number of Americans have problems with the Bush administration’s response. It’s not just the Iraq war, based on false assumptions and handled ineptly, although that is a big part of it. All those lives and all that money, and when we leave, as we inevitably will, the country will be less stable and more dangerous than before — if indeed there is still a country. There is also the torture practiced in our name at places like Abu Ghraib and the endless detentions at Guantanamo. And the secret, extralegal eavesdropping program that the president first denied, then, once discovered, defended. And the dubious stings and prosecutions of people like Aref and Hossain, the two Albany Muslims. National security remains a legitimate concern, but one that can be — and has been — used by leaders to manipulate us. Its invocation should always be greeted with questioning and skepticism, especially when it comes from one not given to reflection or self-doubt. It is understandable if many Americans forgot this in the days after 9/11, but, fortunately, more and more are remembering it today.
As we mark the sixth anniversary of 9/11, your recent reporting on Iraq, Afghanistan and al-Qaida prompts refl ection on the effectiveness to date of the U.S. response to those terrible attacks on the United States six years ago. Sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies reported in September 2006 that the U.S. war in Iraq “has become the primary recruitment vehicle for violent extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world.” We are inspiring more terrorists than we are countering. Unilateral U.S. action and preemptive war have also squandered the good will extended to the United States after 9/11 by the entire international community. It’s clear that war is not the answer. Work to resolve international confl icts and to improve international law enforcement is the beginning. As the 110th Congress returns to work, its focus should be on funding the tools to peacefully resolve and prevent conflicts, and on building international understanding through people-to-people exchanges, public information and education, the United Nations, diplomacy, and economic development. We should honor the victims of 9/11 by doing everything we can to prevent new attacks and preserve a plural, democratic and open society in the United States. To do this we must reorient our priorities and our government spending from war to international cooperation and peace. BONNIE KOSHOFER
9/11 aftermath could have been worse Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
I must say, when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked I would never have guessed that six years later we would be where we are today. It’s easy enough to say, and I do say, that the Bush administration has made an awful botch of things with its misbegotten invasion of Iraq and its only half-finished job in Afghanistan, but still, when I think back, I expected far, far worse. I expected waves of terrorist attacks — on subway trains, on grocery stores, on football stadiums, on drinking-water reservoirs. I thought it would be easy for terrorists, what with fanatical faith and easy access to materials as simple as fertilizer and rat poison. Tomorrow a train would blow up in Chicago, then a bomb would go off during a college football game, then people would die after eating peaches from a supermarket chain. A van full of explosives would be parked at a busy intersection in a major city and would be timed to go off at rush hour, after the manner of the Oklahoma City bombing. How could we protect against such things? I didn’t see that we could, and I foresaw national chaos. I foresaw our being afraid to buy food and to drink our regular water, and I imagined a collapse into savagery, with every family fighting for its own survival on a primitive level. That’s how my thoughts ran in the days and weeks after Sept. 11, 2001. By contrast with that fantasy, the reality is not all that bad. The Islamic holy warriors turned out to be not as well organized, or not as determined, or simply not as competent as I had feared. They have carried out additional attacks to be sure — in London, in Madrid, in Bali, in Moscow, not to mention in Iraq and Afghanistan — and plenty more Americans have died at their hands, but there has not been another attack on our own soil. I’m reluctant to give credit to the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld triumverate, considering their overall bungling, but still it’s a fact, and it can’t be entirely a matter of luck. I might have foreseen, if I had thought about it, our government’s eagerness to abandon constitutional protections and concentrate police-state powers in the executive branch, but I didn’t think about that six years ago. I also might have foreseen the readiness to adopt the most barbaric practices of other police states, meaning hanging suspected enemies by their elbows, depriving them of sleep, isolating them to the point of insanity, submerging them in water, stripping them naked and turning dogs on them, all of which has been documented in both CIA interrogation centers and military prisons. But I didn’t think about that either. I don’t think any of us did. We were too busy puffing ourselves up with our freedom and our democracy, but human nature is what it is, and I don’t believe it varies much.If one tribe or nation will calmly pull out fingernails, so will another. Another thing I did not foresee was the backlash against religious faith. Osama bin Laden and his followers showed us all too clearly the power of this much ballyhooed faith, and after that, President Bush’s own persistent avowals began to sound not quite so anodyne. So in the past year or two we have been treated to the spectacle of books promoting atheism actually rising to the top of the bestseller lists, this in acountry where it is impossible, as a practical matter, to run for high office without professing belief in some sort of supernaturalism. I think a lot of people have taken a second look at this “faith” business as a result of 9/11, and that to me is a good thing to have come out of those unforgettable attacks.
Alot of folks dont even 'get into' their own faith to test the Truth.....stop listening(that is what we do alot of with preachers/teachers) and start HEARING....that is what keeps us honest.....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Some of what was done at Abu Ghraib was not torture but embarrassment and humiliation and some was torture. I'm a believer in do unto others as they would do unto you. How do you think Daniel Pearle was treated by the terrorists and many other Iraqis who were captured by the same terrorists. If torturing some of these terrorists has yielded information that saved 1 US soldier than as far as I'm concerned it was worth it.
WASHINGTON -- Weapons of mass destruction, small boats packed with explosives and Islamic radicalization are the greatest terrorist threats facing the country, top U.S. security officials said Monday on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The officials told Congress the country is much better prepared to face terror threats than it was then, but that terrorists' desire to attack the United States remains strong — an assertion that has yet to be fully accepted by the American public, according to a new poll.
"The enemy is not standing still. They are constantly revising their tactics and adapting their strategy and their capabilities," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "And if we stand still — or worse yet, if we retreat — we are going to be handing them an advantage that we dare not see them hold."
He said the threat of a USS Cole-type attack on U.S. ports — where a small boat packed with explosives detonates in a harbor — is one of his top concerns.
And while the department's goal is to keep nuclear weapons from entering the country, he said it also is focusing on how it would respond should a nuclear device get through and explode — particularly how to identify and track the nuclear materials. Chertoff also said the department is putting in place new screening regulations that would require providing information on flight crews and passengers before a private aircraft departs from overseas bound for the United States.
The radicalization of potential new terrorists, in the U.S. and abroad, is another growing concern, the intelligence officials said at the hearing on the nation's terrorism preparedness.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said there is already a problem with radicalization in the United States, and the Internet makes recruiting people to the radical cause much easier. He said working with state and local law enforcement and reaching out to Muslim and South Asian communities is critical to root out violent extremists in American communities.
The U.S. has disrupted several homegrown plots and has helped disrupt overseas plots, most recently last week when three Islamic terror suspects were arrested in Germany. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said monitoring overseas conversations was key to catching the suspected German terrorists.
He stressed the importance of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — known as FISA — and said the country would lose half of the tools it uses to fight terrorism if lawmakers choose to roll back its powers. Congress updated the law last month, but civil liberties advocates and some leading congressional Democrats think the updated law gives the intelligence community too much surveillance power and want to revisit it to add more limits.
Despite the confidence expressed by top administration officials, fewer Americans believe the country is adequately prepared for another attack. A CBS News/New York Times poll taken Sept. 4-9 found that 39 percent of Americans think the country is sufficiently ready — down from 49 percent a year ago and 64 percent in March 2003, when the war in Iraq began.
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